


cringe frenrey for my fail AO3

by MythosMeta



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Half-Life
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythosMeta/pseuds/MythosMeta
Summary: some highlights from the bank stream and an alt ending. if i fucked up i blame wayne for not posting it and forcing me to rely on my garbage memoryits MY turn to foolishly impose an ounce of sense on funey improv series -puts on clown shoes-
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 10
Kudos: 227





	cringe frenrey for my fail AO3

**Author's Note:**

> you know where to find me  
> and kick my ass for not having the aerti fic ready to post a;lsdjf;sl
> 
> tumblr: @yourmajestysghost  
> twitter: @SongbirdAda

Just then, Gordon thought he heard an eerie buzzing. Or felt, in the middle of his brain. The vibrations were almost familiar, but it’s gone now, so he files the experience away in the ever-growing darkest corner of his mind.

“you're so bad at this game,” Mr. Lover, as Tommy calls him, says in passing. He’s probably some annoying kid, but there’s something about this player that’s grinding Gordon’s fucking gears. 

So he feels no remorse, only sick satisfaction when their guest is immediately, karmically cut down and has to lay there waiting for one of the team to come over and heal him.

Gordon takes his sweet time strolling down the marble staircase. Eventually, he deigns to reach out and hold his hand, not quite pulling him up yet. “Well, well. Look at you, tough guy. If you’re such a pro gamer, why do you need me?”

“i wonder,” he mutters. Whatever that means.

What an asshole. He really reminds Gordon of someone.

* * *

When ‘BENNY.exe’ takes center stage, Gordon damn near blows a gasket. How dare that relentless troublemaker try to tag along with them. How dare his first line of questioning be about Gordon’s _dick_. How dare the team betray their own leader by casually accepting him and wanting to play together and sounding so happy that Gordon couldn’t tell them no.

And then the undead fuck has the audacity to have shitty ghost wi-fi.

“I guess we’ll wait. For Benrey,” he grinds out between his clenched teeth, standing in the lobby.

“my brother... took my account,” the connection crackles directly in Gordon’s ears.

“Bullshit, dude, _how_ could you have a brother, I thought you didn’t even have parents?”

“wh- i didn’t say that.”

“Well, no, but— _urgh_ you’re impossible. I don’t care, just hurry up.” He cuts the waiting room connection with finality.

Gordon continues his tirade as soon as Benrey loads into place with them on the map.

“I’m not gonna fight you,” he says, eyeing Benrey now that he’s disabled his ugly John Wick skin. 

“Not because I like you!” Gordon hastily defends himself from a question that didn’t come. Why is it so hot in this weapons locker? His face won’t stop burning. “I don’t want you to be a big deal for me anymore.”

He rolls his eyes at Benrey’s quiet “that hurts, bro.” He’s really gonna do it this time. Starting now, Benrey is nothing more than background noise in his fun adventure with his friends. He’s putting himself under orders not to engage.

This is a great plan that will definitely, totally work.

* * *

“And then,” Bubby continues, “Gordon goes, ‘actually… you own a bank.’ and stabbed the guy with a sword. Can you believe Dr. Pussy himself managed to do something almost cool for once?” 

“woahhh that’s crazy.”

Despite himself, Gordon puffs up with pride at the unexpected praise. Even if the delivery made it sound almost sarcastic. He chooses to believe it wasn’t sarcastic.

Then Dr. Coomer opens the conspicuous guitar case, and he has to get Benrey’s attention again. He has no choice, right? Can’t have him fucking up the mission. There’s a perfectly good and justifiable reason to keep talking to him.

“Benrey, you need a mask, man.” Gordon waves around his neon pink and blue tiger to demonstrate. 

Benrey’s eyes track the motion but remain impassive. “whatever. the pigs can’t hold me.”

His interest flicks off like a switch and he wanders off on his own, rudely interrupting the beginning of Gordon’s argument. Not that he was planning to have another. Or wants to. Benrey makes him do it, he swears.

He really pisses him off.

* * *

“Be careful with th— uhhhh Benrey, behind you!” 

Gordon shakily raises his gun. For a second, Benrey looks almost surprised. Gordon is quick to get a hold of himself and fire over Benrey’s shoulder. 

He sees the harsh fluorescent lights shift in the helmet’s reflection as Benrey shakes his head once, sharply. He turns on his heel and raises the flamethrower, burning a path back to the main slots room. 

Gordon follows close behind. For safety. He _really_ needs to stop worrying about this guy.

An entire barricade of cops gets wasted at the door, and he can’t help indulging in a little outburst.

“Yeah, get ‘em, Benrey!” 

Benrey glances back at him, curious.

“…I guess,” he finishes lamely. If the game could render pockets, he’d shove his blocky polygon hands in them and duck his head. 

This casino really needs to invest in A/C.

* * *

“I’m comin’ out! Tryin’ to. Why is this window so fucked up?”

“gordon, stay inside.”

“Gordon will go out when Gordon pleases!” He’s not affording Benrey his full attention while he’s struggling to squeeze himself past the window. The nerve of that guy, thinkin’ he can tell the guy who killed him what to do.

Benrey frowns at him. He doesn’t do that a lot… and this one looks so strange. Like, if he had to venture a guess, it’s saying he’s being dumb and missing something completely obvious.

Not that Gordon would know.

Not ten minutes later, Benrey is chasing him down a hall with a kitchen knife, cackling maniacally. 

“Help,” he gasps between his own bouts of hysterical laughter, “Benrey’s trying to stab me!”

No one helps him. For once, it doesn’t occur to him to worry.

Benrey doesn’t stab him.

* * *

It’s a coincidence that they both stopped firing at once. Gordon stares at him, for lack of anything better. Benrey stares back.

“What?”

“nothin’,” Benrey replies, breaking eye contact to reload, “just makin’ sure you’re good.” 

“I’m... good?” 

“you don’t sound good. what’s wrong?”

Gordon sputters, at a loss for words for a minute. Which is forever in Gordon-rant time. “Why are you being so protective all of a sudden?”

“i’m nice. i’m good now.”

He scrubs his hands down his face. The gloves muffle his reply. “Alright. Sure. I'm too tired to object. I believe you.”  
  
“‘bout time,” Benrey says. His grin is so wide. Gordon must be more tired than he thought. It’s positively shark-like, but it doesn’t scare him at all.

This is it. Rock bottom. He’s so exhausted that he’s having a moment with _Benrey_. He needs to take a walk.

Gordon whips around at the obnoxious smooch noise that follows him out the next door.

“Now, Gordon, we need to focus,” Dr. Coomer pipes up next to him, chiding. “You'll just have to kiss _after_ the heist.”

* * *

Gordon, being Gordon, is making a terrible choice. He’s thinking. About a lot of things, now that the cascade mess was so far behind them.

About Benrey. 

But how can you blame me, Gordon protests silently to himself. He’s been acting really weird since he invited himself to the heists. Not even Benrey-weird just… weird. More enthusiastic and concerned for the team’s mortality than he was in most of Black Mesa.

Even just sitting here, in their helicopter seats that were randomized by an algorithm, the Benrey next to him seems more lively than he remembered. And yet they haven’t said much on their oddly bumpy ride to ‘the White House.’

Gordon takes a breath, bracing himself to change that. “All of this, and I still don’t understand you.”

“thought you were ignoring me.”

“I’m trying, asshole! But you—” Gordon cuts himself off before he can say anything more incriminating.

Benrey sits there in unbearably smug silence, probably thinking he’ll drop it like every time before. 

And before, he thought it was the right way to handle not understanding. Surviving the game took top priority. But now they’re here, in a new, less stressful game. Which is probably not a normal thing to think in between firefights. But robbing rich people for fun beats the tar out of being trapped in alien hell-mazes.

What was Benrey trying to say before their showdown? When he wasn’t playing around, why did he seem so confused and frustrated? What even _is_ he? What were those skeletons? Were they always Benrey? His so-called friends? Were they ever? Is it fair to blame him for being "the bad guy"? He said more than once that he didn't want to be. Why did he seem to blank and reset like Coomer’s AI sometimes? Are his memories being lost or distorted somehow? Is that why he mentioned that he knew Gordon and they used to be friends? And he seemed surprised, even worried, almost every time Gordon’s hand was addressed. Does he think pain and death are always as immaterial and impermanent as they are in games? 

Was all of that just dicking around that he’s thinking too hard about?

Thinking himself to death over it won’t cut it, he decides. It’s time for action. Three, two, one, Gordon SPEAK.

He meant to ask one of those intelligent questions. He really did. What he ends up saying is, “How can a computer virus be gay?”

Benrey shoots him a sideways look with the slightest downward tilt to his mouth. 

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that! You just. Like, you don’t. Have a body. So,” he continues awkwardly, feeling like a huge, clumsy cyclops destroying a tiny town. Comfortable, unspoken things town. Silence that doesn’t have to end town. Why did he have to fuck it up? Why is he freaking out?

Nevermind. Benrey’s not making that face anymore. This amused one is much worse. “how can a skin sack full of meat be straight?”

“You—! You don’t know my sexuality and you have no business knowing it,” he tries to say with authority. “I’m just not into you.”

“sure, bro.”

Typical Benrey. Gordon’s thoughts are so derailed after talking to him for just a minute, he might as well throw out the whole goddamn train. Clearly, Benrey is using his god-powers to scramble his brain on purpose. To screw with him or something.

...He only lets that idea go unchallenged for a few blissful, willfully ignorant seconds. It makes no sense and he knows it. Much as the guys like to tease, he’s not a complete dolt. He’s enough of a scientist to identify a pattern. If Benrey is haunting his every step when he’s not even doing anything, how could it be anyone’s fault but his own?

Gordon hesitates. Not doing anything… it’s my fault… all of this is beginning to sound eerily familiar.

Wait.

“Was it really my fault?”

“huh?”

“In the end, like you said. I tried to blame you for everything that happened. Like immediately, all the time. But Bubby told me he did some of those ominous things for fun.”

“...whuh?”

“Holy shit, you’re trying to cut me off. Did I really get it? Did the game make you the villain because I kept insisting you were?”

This time Benrey scoffs. “you think games can control me? that’s not forwards. i’m not weak baby like you.”

“That’s right,” Gordon mutters to himself. Benrey’s face scrunches in confusion. “Someone strong like you, then.”

Benrey glances away from him, and in that second of relief, it comes to him. “Someone like… G-man?”

“no. you’re all wrong and stupid. stop trying to use your— you’re not a smart brain. it’s square.”

Gordon takes the deteriorating objections as encouragement. “But why would Tommy’s dad make you fight? I know you kind of freaked him out in that time stop thing, but you’re Tommy’s friend, like me.” 

“nuh-uh.”

“Yes-huh, you heard him out there, he still likes you. So maybe. You weren’t the one being led around and told what to think.”

Benrey pulls his helmet down over his eyes.

“Maybe… I was?”

The following silence is more pressurized than the flamethrower tank on Benrey’s back.

He lays back on the floor of the chopper. That can’t be comfortable, Gordon’s thoughts absurdly provide.

“hurry uppp can’t this thing go any faster.”

Gordon inhales, and exhales a single high note. Not as angelic as Benrey does it, but he tries. 

“what was that?”

“Calm down, bro.”

“...you’re not doing it right, dummy. it’s supposed to be blue.” 

Gordon opens his mouth to argue with Benrey’s ungrateful, childish ass, but the small smile he sees twisting into place stops him in his tracks.

He turns to idly examining the ceiling of the chopper. Before he knows it, he’s flat on his back too.

“Goodnight, Benrey. Goodnight, Bubby. Goodnight, Coomer.”

The answering chorus of ‘goodnight’s is one of few things that can coax him to rest in these worlds.

For this loading screen sleep cycle, he dreams of a cold, but not unwelcome, weight on his chest.

* * *

Like clockwork, their most important mission goes sideways right out the gate.

He’s not sure if it’s caused by their failures, but Benrey has reverted to being an overt dickhead. “great job, gordon” this and “typical gordon stealing” that. The man— not man… genderless masculine-presenting entity… has no mercy to offer him specifically on this map.

He’s going haywire with the flamethrower. Indiscriminately torching books and fine china and— GORDON.

“ _Dude_ , stop! Ah, jeez, you burned my ass off. Look what you did. Gordon Freeman has no ass.”

“well that’s definitely true.”

“Benrey, if I turn around and you’re checking out my butt again, I swear.”

“you looked at mine,” he practically whines.

“You were standing over me! On purpose, I’m pretty sure! And that’s _not_ an invitation to start vogueing.”

He can’t decide if it’s a good sign or a bad one that his shitty attempt at making Benrey be logical didn’t change anything.

* * *

Gordon doesn’t know what happened. One minute they were as invincible as ever, and then he turns around and everyone is in a heap on the floor. He managed to mostly avoid the green gas all the way into the pardons room. But now what? He can hear them calling his name, even Benrey.

He can also hear a fresh group of soldiers come pouring into the room behind him. The stomping of boots approaches faster and faster. A shot rings out.

But the pain doesn’t come. There's no Game Over screen. Gordon peeks one eye open and is met with an unfamiliar scene. A low-poly dock surrounded by textureless water and a flat city skyline background. The 8-bit waves crash in timed intervals.

“Doctor Freeman,” a stern voice calls.

He collects himself and stands up to meet G-man at eye level. “Mr. Tommy’s dad.” 

G-man huffs, unamused. “Indeed. And what an unfortunate mess you’ve made for my progeny.”

“Okay, so the mission didn’t go entirely as planned. But Tommy chose to come along!”

G-man looks like he has something waspish to say about that, but the appearance of a propeller hat from behind the nearest crate gives him pause. The rest of the man slowly comes into view while the groans of the others sound off nearby.

“Ugh… wait. It— it’s true, dad. I may have asbestos poisoning, but it’s not Mr. Freeman’s fault.”

“Tommy,” G-man intones patiently, “a leader is responsible for their followers. Furthermore, as your guardian—” 

“I’m thirty-seven! I have a job. You don’t— I can take care of myself!”

G-man’s thin, polite veneer drops like a stone. “Thomas.”

“Why can’t you just let me hang out with my— my friends? I don’t need a chaperone. I don’t need to be sent home.” 

“Let’s not do anything rash—”

“No more, dad. This time…”

The uniform monochrome brutally deconstructs and overtakes the colorful setting in an instant. Dr. Coomer and Bubby, stumbling to right themselves in the background, freeze.

The harsh yellow of Tommy’s eyes, that Gordon is reasonably sure wasn’t there before, demands attention as he dramatically points at G-man. “ _You_ go to _your_ room!”

“...I knew you people were a bad influence,” G-man says as pitch black void begins to seep from his form, bleeding the greys and whites into submission, reversing whatever programming or actual magic, as far as Gordon knows, stopped time. “Now, son. Stay out of the way while I correct these minor oversights.”

He doesn’t. Tommy rushes into view, and then— Gordon doesn’t know. A nauseating, disorienting feeling spears through his whole brain. He covers his eyes with his hands, squeezing his head.

When he lets go, he doesn’t know how much later… father and son are nowhere to be seen. And the environment has changed again.

Gordon freaks out when he notices the vat of green sludge under the catwalk he was apparently sitting on. Was, he thinks, as he trips over the railing, seeing it from below as he’s falling.

Something catches him and scoops him up into a… giant hand. He flails his gunless arm out of habit, until he spies the black nail polish and relaxes.

“yo,” says Benrey, “that gas shit hurted.”

“Yeah… yeah it hurted,” Gordon wheezes, catching his breath. “What took you so long, Mr. Indestructible?”

“yeah sorry took me awhile to grow a new torso.”

“You what?”

“...what?”

“Of course. Nevermind. You see where Tommy and businessboy went?”

Benrey carries him through the roofless warehouses and deposits him on a storage container. Throughout the building, Tommy and G-man are phasing in and out of sight. Gordon catches snippets of their arguments.

“—shouldn’t have left Mr. Freeman in—”

“—ou remember from the handbook, don’t you? The code? It’s all very safe.”

“H— how gullible do you think I am? I’ve seen for myse— … —don’t believe you! Stop treating me like—”

“You cannot simply—”

“—man and Benrey! They’ll—”

“I see. Quite right.”

G-man pops into existence at Gordon’s side, but instead of attacking him, he looks up at Benrey and waves a hand. It takes Gordon a moment to realize he can’t see him anymore because he has to look a little further down.

“aw no i’m tiny again,” normal-sized Benrey laments from the top of two containers stacked behind Gordon. Who is still super tense, but he laughs. Benrey has that effect on him.

“Alright, come down here.”

“catch me?” 

“Wh— dude, come on. Grow up.”

“catch benry one more time please?”  
  
Gordon gives him a flat look but opens his arms.

“thank you (:” he says, hopping off the container.

Gordon catches him no problem because he’s cool and strong like that. But there’s one thing… he examines Benrey’s face, curious. “How did you say…?”

“hm? why you lookin’ at me like that, bro?”

“Y’know what. It doesn’t matter.”

“...kiss?”

Gordon drops him. There’s an inexplicable glass shattering sound when his ass hits the roof of the intact box. Gordon chooses to ignore this. “Get your head in the game. Not the literal game. Oh, you know what I mean. How are we gonna help Tommy?”

The scenery changes once more. They’re back on the dock. Gordon turns around and barely suppresses a pitiful shriek when he’s met with Dr. Coomer’s blank eyes less than a foot from his own.

“We’ll help you, Gordon!”

“MMM— Okay. Okay, Coomer… Wait, how did you even hear us? We were in a totally different place.”

Dr. Coomer vacantly stares through him. “...He—”

“YES, HELLO. COOMER. Good, great, let’s move on. Bubby? Where’s Bubby?”

“Here,” Bubby calls from where he’s sitting at the edge of the dock, fiddling with some device. “Certified genius and most kickass Doctor at your service.”

“Other than me!” Coomer interjects.

Bubby looks at him over his shoulder. Gordon can’t see his expression behind the glare of the glasses, but he knows what a couple of cats mere moments from slapping the shit out of each other look like.

“Good to have you back, Bubby,” he quickly diverts. “What have you got there?”

“I’m constructing a machine from the parts I stole from the White House vault. I believe I can limit G-man’s power output, force those two to stay in one location for a minute and stop fucking shit up.”

“No way, that’s awesome, man! How does it work?”

“Gordon,” Bubby condescends, “you’re a scientist. Must I explain something so obvious? Let’s not insult our intelligence by wasting time on baby things for babies.”

“Oh, uh… sure. Cool. Got it.” 

Benrey, of course, doesn’t pass up on blood in the water. “ha ha! science boy can’t even figure out interdimensional travel.”

Gordon grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him up against one of the crates. “Benrey. When we get out of here, I’m gonna— What’s wrong with you?”

Benrey’s slack expression would be worrisome were it not for the little dopey grin he’s been seeing more and more since his return. “gonna what? tell me…”

Gordon weighs his options… and settles on pressing one short, hard kiss to Benrey’s cheek. He knows it smacks of cowardice. He retreats as fast as he can.

“Sorry, that was— we should uh— let’s talk. Later.”

The helmet thunks against the crate with how fast Benrey’s nodding.

“How exciting!” Dr. Coomer says. Oh, no. Gordon forgot he was there. “I’ve never been to a wedding on the beach.”

“WEDDING?” Gordon screeches, raising his hands in innocence and stepping away. 

“Yes,” Dr. Coomer replies mechanically. “A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in—”

“I got it!” Bubby announces.

“—Great work, Dr. Bubby!”

Saved by the Bubby. Sometimes Gordon wonders if he’s the only one with the memory of a goldfish. And then he remembers he shouldn’t test his luck.

“Perfect. Where are we having the showdown?”

Bubby adjusts his glasses, not because he has to, just to be smug. “I’ve got just the place.”

* * *

“SUPER PUNCH OUT,” Dr. Coomer’s voice blasts through the empty ring.

Gordon selects his crowbar from the menu and starts thwacking it against his palm menacingly. “Yeahhh, let’s get it!”

Dr. Coomer and Bubby put on their boxing gloves. Bubby punches the button on the machine. Harder than was probably necessary. It seems to activate, however much it’s now sparking and smoking.

As promised, G-man appears in the ring. Some old fanfare plays, pixelated fire shoots from the walkway at his back, and the referee voice announces _'G-man, enters the fray!'_

And there’s giant Benrey poised to step on him.

“Hey, hey!” Gordon cautions him. “Benrey, Benrey… Benrey… hang on. Maybe we should—”

Whatever dark portal thing it is that G-man controls starts to contort. It expands and swirls, stretching into ominous tendrils. A few of them wrap around Benrey’s legs and topple him out of sight. Gordon is knocked off his feet by the growing vortex, slamming him spine-first into a corner pole.

“We should get his ass!” Bubby decides, launching into his Shadow the Hedgehog homing attack. He is immediately sucked into the storm and tossed about like a plastic bag in the wind. On the bright side, his Doppler effect screaming is still funny.

“Dr. Coomer!”

The man in question glances around. “The disembodied voice of God?”

“No, it’s me, Tommy! I’m in the stands.”

“Hello, Tommy!”

“Hi. Sorry I’m late, it— it took me a bit to get what we needed. Check your inventory, I set up a new pair of shoes for— you can switch to.”

Dr. Coomer’s shoes blip off his model, leaving him weirdly feetless and floating until the new pair replaces them. “Oh! They’re quite heavy. Tommy, could these be the fabled Iron Boots from Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for the GameCube™?”

“That’s right! You know what to do?”

Dr. Coomer drags himself towards the vortex. “I can use these,” he strains through a predatory smile, “to traverse! The dark pit! Of his heart!”

He gradually picks up speed, cutting through the biting wind until he’s running full tilt, smashing craters into the ring with every crushing step. 

The release of the potential energy in Dr. Coomer’s punch hits G-man like a freight train. The poor stick of a being crumples. Never stood a chance. Anticlimactically, the void vanishes as though it were never there.

Bubby drops to the mat and ragdolls. Dr. Coomer punches G-man again. And again. Soon enough, Gordon can hear Bubby punching too.

“Guys. Guys you got him. He’s out, don’t kill him.”

“lame. no fair,” Benrey says, shrinking back down to size. “you got to kill me.”

Gordon tries to pull himself up to argue properly, but doubles over at the twinge in his back. Awful idea, hurts worse. He gives up and lays back down.

“human need help? skin nice and flexible? insides full of fluids?”

“Mhm. Yep. Gordon can’t walk yet. But Gordon okay.” He offers a shaky thumbs up from his place on the floor.

Benrey starts singing, and when Gordon checks, the bubbles are green. Teal and green.

“That means heal beam!” Tommy provides. Gordon doesn’t have the energy nor the will to tell him he knows.

* * *

Thus ends the second? Third? Science Team adventure. Benrey used the sweet voice to heal G-man, not that he wouldn’t have gotten better on his own, but Tommy had asked nicely. He and his dad had a long talk about mutual respect and employee rights and a bunch of other things Gordon was too tired to fully absorb.

He’d wandered out to the low-poly coast, where the rest soon followed.

“Let me see your camera,” Bubby says from behind the sandcastle he and Dr. Coomer are building around Tommy, who is now half-buried in it.

“huh?”

Benrey looks up from where he’s standing knee-deep in the water. That’s as far as it will render. Gordon knows because he’s right next to him. They’re watching the artificial sunrise. 

It might be romantic if he wasn’t so distracted by how uncomfortable Benrey’s wet and sandy boots and pants look. Why didn’t he take them off before getting in the water? Weirdo. He can’t help but think it fondly lately.

“The one you use for your photo album. I want a new group picture.”

Benrey squints.

Bubby crosses his arms petulantly. “You can be in it and have a copy this time. I guess.”

“Yay!” Tommy calls from the sand. “We’re all friends again!”

Dr. Coomer runs up and slaps Benrey on the back so hard, he hits the water facedown with a painful splat. “Welcome to the team, Doctor Bipple!”

Gordon snorts and tows him by the collar to dry land. He seems content to float, until he has to get up and pick a pose to do next to Tommy’s castle. He clips through half of it and T-poses, making Bubby laugh so hard he almost loses the camera to the sea.

Y’know, Gordon thinks as he throws his arms around Dr. Coomer and Benrey’s shoulders, you could make a good stream out of this.


End file.
